Honors Requirements
Honors Selection process
At the end of the junior year, if a student has a grade point average (GPA) of 3.75 or better in linguistics courses and at least 3.50 overall, the student is eligible to enter the Honors Program. In consultation with the undergraduate advisor, the student may approach a tenure-line linguistics faculty member to request that the faculty member serve as the Thesis Advisor. When the student and the Thesis Advisor(s) agree to work together, they fill out an Honors Program Form and turn it in to the Linguistics Office, where it will be placed in the student’s file. At this point, the student has entered the Honors Program.
Senior thesis
Students must write an original honors thesis under the guidance of a Thesis Advisor from the linguistics faculty, chosen in consultation with the undergraduate advisor. The thesis must be a substantial piece of work; it may be a revised and expanded version of a term paper. The Thesis Advisor determines whether the thesis is acceptable and may require the student to register for up to 6 credits in Honors Thesis (LING 403), taken pass/no pass (P/N).
Upon fulfilling these requirements, the candidate is approved to receive a B.A. degree with honors in Linguistics.
Department Senior Theses
2024
Anouk Butler, Policing Native Hawaiian Sound: Colonial dominance and Kanaka resistance, advisor: Rachel Weissler.
Leila Jones, The Impact of Indigenous Language Revitalization and Representation on Student Experience at the University of Oregon, advisor: Gabriela Perez Baez.
Jay Taylor, Autapix: Effect of neurotype identity of conversational partners on communicative success
and speaking style, advisor: Lisa Redford.
2022
Tyler Demmon, Proto-South Adelbert: A Phonological Reconstruction of the South Adelbert branch of Trans-New Guinea, advisor: Don Daniels.
Jaidan McLean, Exploring Gender and Sibilants: A Le/s/on From Transgender Speakers, advisor: Tyler Kendall.
Tillena Trebon, Effect of hesitation sound phonetic quality on perception of language fluency and accentedness, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
2021
Isabel Crabtree, Nationalism and “foreign” speech: The role of listener ideology in perception of non-native speech volume, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
Sabrina Piccolo, Effect of Accent Perception on the Perception of Professionalism, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
Kira Seretan, Split diminutives: A study of truncation patterns in American English speakers with varying linguistic backgrounds, advisor: Volya Kapatsinski.
2020
Chasen Afghani, The Role of Financial Rewards in Non-Native Speech Adaptation, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
Carissa Diantoro, Investigating the effect of 2nd language learning on the acquisition of a 3rd language rhythm pattern, advisor: Lisa Redford.
Kayla Walker, The Role of Semantic Predictability in Adaptation to Nonnative-Accented Speech, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
2019
Cyndie Davenport, Dialect Variation in English, and Investigation into the Disappearing Word Effect, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
Zachary Houghton, A Cross-linguistic Study of Word Order in Binomial Expressions in English, Korean, and Japanese, advisor: Volya Kapatsinski.
2017
Drew McLaughlin, Individual Variation in the Perception of Variable and Degraded Speech, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
Anna Robinson, Linguistic and Musical Integration: Effect of Melodic Accent on Rhythm Perception, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk.
2016
Shelby Arnson, Twentieth Century Sound Change in Washington DC African American English, advisor: Tyler Kendall.
Brittany Parham, Diagnosing Stress: The Acoustic Correlates of Stress in Warm Springs Iciskin, co-advisors: Spike Gildea, Melissa Baese-Berk, and Joana Jansen, NILI.
Honors College Theses
2022
Nicolas Vassilenko, Mixed-Reality in Language Acquisition and Its Effect on Social Distance, advisor: Julie Sykes
2021
Isabel Crabtree, Nationalism and “foreign” speech: The role of listener ideology in perception of non-native speech volume, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk. Isabel was awarded the Barbara Corrado Pope Award by Clark Honors College.
2020
Kayla Walker, The Role of Semantic Predictability in Adaptation to Nonnative-Accented Speech, advisor: Melissa Baese-Berk**Kayla was awarded the Applied Research Award by Clark Honors College.**
2019
Jordan A. G. Douglas, A Formal and Semantic Reconstruction of Cariban Postpositions, co-advisors: Spike Gildea and Don Daniels.
2018
Hayden Igartua, Linguistic Feature Spread in Online Social Networks, co-advisors: Spike Gildea and Charlotte Vaughn.